“Not a damn, sir,” Flamborough admitted crudely, in a tone of despair. “Could you say it all over again slowly?”
“It’s hardly worth while at this stage,” Sir Clinton answered, dismissing the subject. “I’ll take it up again with you later on, perhaps, after we get the P.M. results. It was an illuminating conversation, though, Inspector, if my guess turns out to be right. Now there’s another matter. Have you any idea when the morning papers get into the hands of the public—I mean the earliest hour that’s likely in the normal course?”
“It happens that I do know that, sir. The local delivery starts at 7 a.m. In the suburbs, it’s a bit later, naturally.”
“Just make sure about it, please. Ring up the publishing departments of the Courier and the Gazette. You needn’t worry about the imported London papers.”
“Very good, sir. And now about this journal, sir?” the Inspector added with a touch of genial impishness in his voice.
“Evidently you won’t be happy till I look at it,” Sir Clinton grumbled with obvious distaste for the task. “Let’s get it over, then, since you’re set on the matter.”
“So far as I can see, sir,” Flamborough explained, “there are only three threads in it that concern us: the affair he had with that girl Hailsham; his association with Mrs. Silverdale; and his financial affairs—which came as a surprise to me, I must admit.”
Sir Clinton glanced up at the Inspector’s words; but without replying, he drew the fat volumes of the journal towards him and began his examination of the passages to which Flamborough’s red markers drew attention.
“He didn’t model his style on Pepys, evidently,” he said as he turned the leaves rapidly, “There seems to be about ten percent of ‘I’s’ on every page. Ah! Here’s your first red marker.”
He read the indicated passage carefully.
“This is the description of his feelings on getting engaged to Norma Hailsham,” he commented aloud. “It sounds rather superior, as if he felt he’d conferred a distinct favour on her in the matter. Apparently, even in the first flush of young love, he thought that he wasn’t getting all that his merits deserved. I don’t think Miss Hailsham would have been flattered if she’d been able to read this at the time.”
He passed rapidly over some other passages without audible comment, and then halted for a few moments at an entry.
“Now we come to his meeting with Mrs. Silverdale, and his first impressions of her. It seems that she attracted him by her physique rather than by her brains. Of course, as he observes: ‘What single woman could fully satisfy all the sides of a complex nature like mine?’ However, he catalogues Mrs. Silverdale’s attractions lavishly enough.”
Flamborough, with a recollection of the passage in his mind, smiled cynically.
“That side of his complex nature was highly developed, I should judge,” he affirmed. “It runs through the stuff from start to finish.”
Sir Clinton turned over a few more pages.
“It seems as though Miss Hailsham began to have some inklings of his troubles,” he said, looking up from the book. “This is the bit where he’s complaining about the limitations in women’s outlooks, you remember. Apparently he’d made his fiancée feel that his vision took a wider sweep than she imagined, and she seems to have suggested that he needn’t spend so much time in staring at Mrs. Silverdale. It’s quite characteristic that in this entry he’s suddenly discovered that the Hailsham girl’s hands fail to reach the standard of beauty which he thinks essential in a life-companion. He has visions of sitting in suppressed irritation while these hands pour out his breakfast coffee every day through all the years of marriage. It seems to worry him quite a lot.”
“You’ll find that kind of thing developing as you go on, sir. The plain truth is that he was tiring of the girl and he simply jotted down everything he could see in her that he didn’t find good enough for him.”
Sir Clinton glanced over the next few entries.
“So I see, Inspector. Now it seems her dancing isn’t so good as he used to think it was.”
“Any stick to beat a dog with,” the Inspector surmised.
“Now they seem to have got the length of a distinct tiff, and he rushes at once to jot down a few bright thoughts on jealousy with a quotation from Mr. Wells in support of his thesis. It appears that this ‘entanglement,’ as he calls it, is cramping his individuality and preventing the full self-expression of his complex nature. I can’t imagine how we got along without that word ‘self-expression’ when we were young. It’s a godsend. I trust the inventor got a medal.”
“The next entry’s rather important, sir,” Flamborough warned him.
“Ah! Here we are. We come to action for a change instead of all this wash of talk. This is the final burst-up, eh? H’m!”
He read over the entry thoughtfully.
“Well, the Hailsham girl seems to have astonished him when it came to the pinch. Even deducting everything for his way of looking at things, she must have
